Gibraltar: Taking a Pub Team To The Top With Bruno’s Magpies

[Hampus Silverholt]

A lot of our players were getting booked in the Europa League, which meant that five were just one yellow card away from suspension going into the Playoff first leg against Werder Bremen.

I could just sense that something was going to go wrong - little did I know that it would have nothing to do with player suspensions…

The reason for my pessimism was because we were also without injured top scorer Juan Gutierrez who had scored 13 goals in Europe this season, plus key midfielder Yago Santiago.

So it seemed our luck was out going into the first leg. That theory was confirmed when we scored 3 goals that were disallowed…

…and also missed a penalty…

…and Bremen scored 3 goals with their 3 shots on target.

I don’t think it could have gone any worse, but we still had time in the second leg to ruin things further.

We lost 3-0 in the first leg and after 68 minutes in the second leg, we had completely turned things around and were 3-0 up ourselves.

Momentum was surely on our side but then Bremen scored 2 late goals as we pushed for the definitive blow. You know your luck is out when that sequence of events happens!

So for the 2nd year in a row, we’re knocked out of a European competition at the Playoff stage after doing all the hard work in the League Phase.

We needed to get over the disappointment, so I thought there was no better way to do that than signing a former World Cup winner.

That’s right, 34 year old Paul Pogba has joined Magpies on an 18-month contract - I didn’t think I’d be writing that when the save started!

Just under 400 people attended his debut against College ‘75 in the Gibraltar Football League where he recorded 2 assists in a starting XI containing two seventeen year old midfielders from Gibraltar.

His arrival increased the belief that we’d not only have an unbeaten season but actually win 100% of our league games. Then we somehow lost to 10 men Lincoln Red Imps to ruin our 100% win record.

Little did that matter in the end as we completed what is now the routine task of winning the league title.

Domestically it’s as you expect.

But for the second year in a row we’ve qualified from the League Phase in Europe, only to get knocked out at the first available opportunity in the knockout rounds - we need to break that cycle next season!​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

Despite signing an 18 month contract in January, after just 4 months Paul Pogba hated Magpies and Gibraltar so much that he decided to retire at the end of the season …

His last game in professional football saw him score in the 2028 Gibraltar Rock Cup final to secure us the domestic double once again.

So after 8 appearances, 2 goals and 3 assists he is off and leaves behind our slowly improving squad, which I consider to be around the quality of a decent League One side in England now.

Winger Danny Murphy won the Player of the Year with 15 goals and 12 assists in the league. He starts all league games due to competition rules requiring 5 Gibraltar trained players being on the pitch at all times and his form meant I could not ignore him for the national team any longer either.

In fact, this was a record season for goals scored as we recorded 91 in total, averaging over 4 a game in the league.

Since arriving at the club in January from Colchester, striker Drakes-Thomas has scored 20 league goals in just 11 games which made him our top scorer!

Despite him being a good signing, the board are really not impressed with our other transfer dealings believing that we’ve overpaid massively. They’ve not been incredible signings but at the same time have improved the team, so I’m not sure what else we can do!

It might be why we’ve been given just under £3m to spend in the summer as well.

We currently have £6m in the bank and made a bit of a loss this season but the European money should make up for that next year - that’s providing we qualify for the League Phase of a European competition for the 4th year in a row.

The club facilities are getting there too, although we’ve not been able to upgrade youth facilities in a few years now which is quite worrying.

Gibraltar is also now 30th in the coefficients table, meaning that 1 team will qualify for the Europa League from next season - currently, the league winners qualify for the Champions League 1st round and 3 other teams qualify for the Conference League first round.

The league is up 16 positions to 61st and we’ve also turned Magpies into one of the top 100 clubs in Europe (in terms of coefficient points anyway…)

With the Gibraltar national team, we are now 170th in the world rankings thanks to friendly wins over Kosovo and Hungary away, which is our greatest victory to date.

We’ve not achieved much in our 18 months in charge but with our upcoming Nations League group, we hopefully have a chance of finally winning some games as Gibraltar manager.

So after 6 years in charge of Magpies we’re progressing nicely but it would nice to get further than the last 16 of a European competition next season.​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

It’s the beginning of the 2028/29 season and it’s been an emotional summer as we said goodbye to a lot of players who have been essential to our success over the years.

Out of all the released players, 4 of them have gained Gibraltar citizenship and are an integral part of the national team squad. The most significant departure was Nya Kirby, who was one of our very first signings 6 seasons ago.

The other sad departure was Ateef Konate who scored a Champions League hat trick for us in the League Phase against RB Leipzig nearly 3 years ago.

In terms of players in, it’s been a strange transfer window as we had our smallest budget for a while. We’re still only a 1.5 star reputation club as well, so we struggle to attract a lot of the better players.

It meant that we made more free transfers and loans than usual, the first of which was young Macedonian Goran Cvetanovski.

Another decent free transfer was Harry Leonard, who made 16 Premier League appearances for Blackburn last season.

The only player we signed for a fee was Tom Bayliss for £900k from Shrewsbury - the scouts don’t rate him but I think he’s a very well-rounded midfielder.

Lastly, two loan signings were made from clubs in North London. Centre back Alfie Dorrington was the first on loan from Spurs with Michael Coates also joining from Arsenal.

As usual, our business was done as quickly as possible as our season starts very early in July with the Champions League qualifying rounds.

We’re now at the point where we should be comfortably getting through the first two rounds at least and FC Milsami Orhei of Moldova stand in our way in the first round.

We’ve only made it to the league phase of the Champions League once in this save, I think it’s about time we did it again this season!​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

This is our fourth season in a row in the Champions League 1st qualifying round and after making the League Phase 3 years ago, I was quietly confident we could do it again this time around with a much better squad.

Whereas four years ago we only scraped through the 1st qualifying round, this time we dominated Milsami Orhei over two legs.

15-1 on aggregate! I was expecting it to be easy but not that easy!

HJK of Finland were next and again they were no match for us as we recorded two 3-0 victories.

So when we were drawn against Cypriot team AEK Larnacas in the 3rd qualifying round, confidence was very high throughout the squad.

That was despite us being without our star striker Dennis Drakes-Thomas, who had scored 7 goals in 4 Champions League games at this point.

But his absence did not matter one bit as we again won on aggregate 6-0, making it four clean sheets in a row but more importantly just two games between us and the League Phase.

The champions of Greece, AEK Athens, were the team that stood between the League Phase of the Champions League and us. After losing against Goteborg at this stage last season, we were very much out to make amends.

We conceded the first goal of the tie, but after that we were in complete control. I have never known the qualifying rounds to be such a doddle.

So with absolute ease, we qualified for the League Phase of the Champions League for only the second ever time and the first time in 3 years.

Just like 3 years ago, we’ll play Real Madrid in the League Phase but there are some very winnable games in there too, not least in our first match against Olimpija Ljubljana.

The Champions League also means we get a huge influx of money, with £12.75m in prize money received simply for getting to this stage of the competition.

There is also the small matter of the Gibraltar Football League this season, where we are obviously massive favourites to win it for the 5th year in a row.

However Lincoln Red Imps are constantly improving and have also qualified for a European group stage competition this season by making the Conference League proper after negotiating 4 qualifying rounds.

Three years ago we finished second from bottom of the League Phase table but this time around I think we could cause a few upsets.
​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

It’s almost 2 years since I took the Gibraltar national team job alongside Magpies and in all honesty very little has happened with the national team.

However, I have been signing younger players released by English clubs and sticking them in the under-23 side in the hope that they’d qualify for Gibraltarian citizenship. Seb Wassell and Danny Wilson are the first results of that experiment.

Wassell made his international debut (despite having never even played a competitive game for Magpies!) along with Sam Barnes, who has been a firm part of the Magpies team for the past two years and also decided to take on Gibraltar citizenship

The new players didn’t stop us from finishing bottom of our Nations League group though. We’ll face Malta in the relegation playoff, which weirdly takes place in 18 months' time when we could have a completely different squad!

One of the players who I’m also hoping converts to Gibraltar is Dennis Drakes-Thomas, although it might be hard to keep him around at the club long enough for him to get citizenship.

That’s because Premier League side Leicester were sniffing around him in August

Luckily their interest only started on deadline day, which meant we could persuade him to stay until the next transfer window - where we’ll do everything we can to keep him.

The only other transfer in was Aaron Ramsey, recently released by Aston Villa, who is an excellent signing considering the finances involved.

He was signed soon after the registration deadline for the Champions League, which means he’s unavailable for all of our League Phase games.

Our first Champions League game was probably our most important, at home to Olimpija Ljubljana.

And the man of the moment Drakes-Thomas scored a hattrick in a 4-1 win. This time last year he was playing League Two football for Colchester and now he’s scoring a hat trick in the League Phase of the Champions League!

That victory put us top after 1 game, I suppose that means we were technically the best team in Europe!

It was all short-lived though as we lost our next 2 matches against Benfica and Bayern Munich, where a 4-2 loss was probably the best result we could hope for.

Those 2 goals against Bayern also meant we broke the record of most goals scored in a Champions League season, still with 5 games to go!

Our fourth game of the League Phase was an uninspiring loss against West Ham. We did get a red card in the first half but it still showed that we’re miles away from being as good as the other teams in Europe.

So at the halfway stage, we are 30th in the League Phase table with one win and three losses. A top-24 finish and progression to the knockout rounds looks out of reach but is still doable if we win some of our remaining matches.

Considering we’re now not looking too out of place in the Champions League, you’d think we’d have a fan base building up by now?
Wrong.

We are a Champions League club with just 34 season ticket holders!

Obviously signing Paul Pogba last season made no difference to the global appeal of the club!

Maybe we’ll get a few more supporters if we get to the knockout stages of the Champions League…​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

After losing our last three in the Champions League, qualification for the knockout rounds looked like it was slipping away from us.

However that all changed with a whirlwind victory over PSV to put us back in contention to finish in the top 24.

Then Dennis Drakes-Thomas decided to put himself in the shop window for a January move to the Premier League by scoring a hattrick in a barely believable 6-1 victory over Porto, surely our finest win to date.

Midfielder Yago Santiago is very likely to leave on a free at the end of the season yet scored 4 goals in those two games!

Another key man for us has been inside forward Nikola Dukic, with 6 goals and 6 assists in the Champions League this season, but he was ruled out for our final two group stage matches with a long-term injury.

The first of those games was against Real Madrid. Three years ago, we lost to them 2-1 at the same stage, with centre back Jarell Quansah the only remaining player from that game.

Yet with a better team this time around, we got smashed! It meant that with one game remaining, we were on 9 points and in 21st place - so we probably needed to get a result from our final game to guarantee qualification to the knockout phase.

Real Sociedad were our opponents and it turns out we had nothing to worry about.

The victory against ten men meant that we finished 14th in the League Phase with 4 wins from 8 games, a truly amazing feat for a team of our stature.

Our prize for making the knockouts for the very first time is a two-legged tie against Borussia Dortmund in the knockout playoff round

Drakes-Thomas's 15 goals in the Champions League had not gone unnoticed at this point and he was getting bids from seemingly every club in the Championship and bottom half of the Premier League table in January.

I initially accepted some of the bids but then had a change of heart - how can I sell our best player ahead of our biggest ever game?

He’s very annoyed at having to stay but I’m more than happy to take it one transfer window at a time with him, there’s simply no way I’d go into the Dortmund game without him.

To emphasise his brilliance, he has 22 goals from just 10 games in the league! We’ve won ten from ten such is our dominance, with winger Harry Leonard on 9 goals from just 3 league matches!

So we seem to be hitting form at the perfect time… we could seriously give Dortmund a fright in the Champions League!​

 

[FM_TNSSO]

Incredible results there in the Champions League to get you through the league stage. Dortmund will be tough, but just to get this far is an achievement in itself...especially as you looked destined to go out 3 games ago!

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

Incredible results there in the Champions League to get you through the league stage. Dortmund will be tough, but just to get this far is an achievement in itself...especially as you looked destined to go out 3 games ago!

Yeah I wasn't sure if we'd even get to this stage in the save so to get here after 6 seasons is mad! Just hope we haven't hit our ceiling already as there's still a big gulf between us and the better teams in Europe

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

This was truly our biggest set of games as Magpies manager yet - Champions League knockout phase football in just our 6th season in charge.

Our starting XI contained players all aged 25 or under and with us being knocked out of the last 32 of the Europa League last season, I was not expecting anything from the Dortmund games.

So what a time to put in our best-ever performance.

And what a time to achieve our best ever result.

We’ve had some crazy games this season but this tops the lot - we’ve beaten Borussia Dortmund 4-1 away from home!

Surely we couldn’t bottle a 3 goal lead in the second leg?

We didn’t.

Magpies have beaten Borussia Dortmund and are into the last 16 of the Champions League!

The money we’re receiving for this run is just ridiculous. It was £8m for that one win alone and we now have £25m in the bank.

The only downside to that was that our longest serving player Quansah and first choice left back Rui Dionisio were both ruled out of the first leg against our next opponents.

And those opponents will be Bayern Munich.

We last faced them literally three months ago in the League Phase, where a 4-2 loss was far better than I was anticipating.

There is no way we’ll beat them and with two first-choice defenders suspended, it could get messy.

But who cares, we’ve made it to the last 16 of the Champions League!​

 

[FM_TNSSO]

INCREDIBLE!!!!

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

What a result again may dortmund. Be winning it in another 6 seasons

ha that's the aim, will be interesting to see how far we can go!

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

Going into the last 16 of the Champions League, we had the unusual feeling of having no expectations. We were purely there for the occasion and I could not have put it better than our scouts:

“Bayern Munich are a much better team than us”

We also had a very makeshift defence due to injuries and suspensions.

So to get to 89 minutes with the score at 1-1 was an amazing achievement… if only we kept things tight for the last few minutes!

The 3-1 loss also included another injury headache, with 16 goals in 16 Champions League matches Drakes-Thomas ruled out for the second leg.

So it was never going to go well, but we did ourselves proud.

I can’t even complain about losing 5-2 to Bayern Munich in the last 16 of the Champions League, it shows just how far we’ve come in 6 seasons.

Gareth Gallagher, released by Man United at 18 and signed from League One Salford, now has a Champions League knockout goal at the Allianz Arena on his CV.

The Champions League run has done wonders for the finances. We currently have £33million in the bank which is the highest it’s ever been.

Tom Fellows started both games against Bayern at right back and was the latest Magpies player to take up Gibraltarian citizenship after being at the club for more than 2 years - he was signed from West Brom for £300,000.

It’s a good job players of his quality are converting to Gibraltar as our youth intakes are continuously poor.

Not that it’s impacting us in the Gibraltar Football League, where we have to have 5 Gibraltar trained players on the pitch at all times.

After getting knocked out by Bayern we then cruised to our 5th league victory in a row.

In fact it was the perfect season for us, as we won 20 out of 20 league matches.

We inevitably followed up with a win in the Rock Cup to complete our most successful season to date.

So we’re now truly dominant in Gibraltar, the next step is to constantly make the knockout rounds of the Champions League.​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

What a season 2028/29 was for us at Magpies. As usual, we won the league and cup but what was far from usual was that we reached the last 16 of the Champions League, knocking out Borussia Dortmund in the last 32.

We were knocked out by Bayern Munich, who got to the semi final before losing against eventual champions Barcelona.

Dennis Drakes-Thomas has been one of the main reasons for the success in Europe this season and unsurprisingly won Gibrlatar player of the year as well thanks to averaging more than 2 goals per game.

The former Colchester striker ended the campaign with 53 goals in 36 games! With Premier League clubs eyeing him up, I think we’re going to struggle to keep him in the summer.

Him and Harry Leonard have been the standout players this year, Leonard in particular has been a great piece of business after signing on a free from Blackburn last summer

It’s been a season of crazy goalscoring feats and we ended up with 23 different scorers in our squad.

The Champions League run means that we have £31m in the bank, which is by far the most we’ve ever had.

Our income is almost entirely in prize money though and we still get very little from sponsorship and broadcasting.

But it does mean we’ve been given a hefty budget of £17m to spend in the summer.

That sounds great, but our 2 star reputation is beginning to take it’s toll and could really hold us back in trying to sign better players.

We’ve got a good enough scouting network to spot players, the problem is that the players who will improve the squad won’t join because of our reputation!

We now also have very good facilities at the club, the only annoying thing is that we haven’t been able to upgrade youth facilities for 3 or 4 seasons which I’m beginning to think is a bug.

One of my hopes now is that other Gibraltarian teams kick on in Europe, particularly Lincoln Red imps who will enter Europa League 3rd qualifying rounds thanks to Gibraltar’s improved coefficient.

College Europa are another team that have a decent squad - containing many of our former players including Bridge, Adshead and Konate - but are struggling financially so I’m also tempted to redistribute the accumulation of wealth we’ve hoarded at Magpies.

We’re still in charge of the Gibraltar national team but there is very little to note. We finally achieved a resounding win over Liechtenstein but continue to lose against all the higher ranked teams and I don’t expect qualification for a major tournament anytime soon.

However, Gibraltar as a nation is now up to 23rd in the European coefficients, above countries such as the Czech Republic.

It means from next season there will be two teams from Gibraltar in the Champions League, and the league winners will enter at the 2nd qualifying round rather than the first.

Our Champions League run also means we’re up to 49th in the club coefficients table, above teams such as Galatasary and Celtic, making our 2 star reputation even more confusing!

So it’ll be interesting to see if we can actually improve the squad in the summer, especially if we end up losing star striker Drakes-Thomas​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

The 2029/30 season started with a couple of big departures who left on Bosmans including first choice midfileder Santiago and Jefferson Costa getting his wish by returning to Brazil.

And the inevitable bids came in for our Champions League hero Dennis Drakes-Thomas right away.

£4m plus 50% of his next transfer fee was about the best I could do for a player who had just 12 months remaining on his contract and was never going to renew at Magpies.

So he leaves us after scoring 75 goals in 50 games - what a ridiculous goals to game ratio!

He’ll be sorely missed but moves on to become first choice striker at Premier League side Middlesborough, earning more than 6x the money he was on at Magpies despite being our highest paid player.

With that sad farewell over, the hunt was on to find the replacement for our star player.

Luckily I found him straight away, signing Sonny Perkins on loan with an option to buy at the end of the season.

Not so lucky was the fact that he got injured for 3 months soon after signing! So the hunt was back on for a replacement for the replacement…

Perkins’ injury resulted in us signing Brazilian Ivonildo Fernandes for £700k, a decent option out wide with existing players Leonard and Veselinovic (and Perkins) capable of playing up front.

Elsewhere we signed Lewis Gibson on a permanent deal from Sheffield Wednesday, he’ll likely be backup but centreback was a position we needed to strengthen in.

And he’ll be back up because we have also signed Dontae Labatt on loan from Chelsea and Regan Banister from Man United - they’ll likely be our first choice defensive pairing for the season.

Marek Fišer also came in on loan from Man City, we didn’t need him but we’re paying 0% of his wages - the only problem now is making room in the Champions League squad for him!

Those loan signings were not registered in time for the 1st qualifying round, where we will face Hungarian champions Gyirmot Footbal Club (who are in the second tier in Hungary in real life!)

We’re now big favourites for these 1st round qualifying games - I’m not expecting a 15-1 aggregate win like last season but I am expecting Champions League group stage football again after getting to the last 16 last season.

I’m also hoping College Europa can go far in the ECL, whereas Lincoln Red Imps enter the Europa League at the 3rd qualifying round stage so it would be nice for another Gibraltrian team to make the group stages of European competition.

Let’s see what we can do in the Champions League then! Another run to the last 16 would be nice…​

 

[GingerBeardBurts]

Literally read this whole thing start to finish yesterday during my lunch break at work and came back today to check if there was more! Absolutely love it, what a sensational managerial career thus far. Looking forward to further updates. Keep up the good work.

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

Literally read this whole thing start to finish yesterday during my lunch break at work and came back today to check if there was more! Absolutely love it, what a sensational managerial career thus far. Looking forward to further updates. Keep up the good work.

cheers mate glad you're enjoying it, planning to continue for the next few months at least so I'm looking forward to seeing how far we can go

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

Our starting XI against Gyirmot in the 1st leg of the 1st qualifying round of the Champions League still contained Dennis Drakes-Thomas (in what would be his last game for the club) as well as centre-back Quansah in his 5th season at Magpies.

And it was an easy task for us over two legs, with Aaron Ramsey’s hattrick in the first match sending us on our way to a 10-0 aggregate victory.

Next up for us was Northern Irish champions Larne, in what was another decent draw for us on paper.

We weren’t quite as emphatic as we were in the 1st round, but we still eased past them with Ivonildo Fernandes - only signed because of a long-term injury to Sonny Perkins - grabbing a hattrick to stake his place in the side.

Sheriff Tiraspol were up next in the 3rd round. What followed was a very unexpected result…

We could only muster a 0-0 draw in the first leg at home so they were very much favourites for the second leg.

Yet what followed was just bizarre. We won 10-0.

Seriously. 10-0.

I shouldn’t be complaining about that win but it just seemed a bit weird. It was a complete fluke result especially after the first leg being so close.

Our striker Sava Veselinovic scored 6 goals in the game despite being poor at finishing… it was the first time I’ve ever wanted to reload a save and play the game again because the result was too good!

Dinamo Zagreb awaited us in the 4th and final qualifying round before the League Phase.

However, the Sherif result had weirdly tainted things and it was almost annoyingly easy against the Croatian champions too (despite only managing to get 2 fans to travel to the away leg…)

So we’ve stormed into the Champions League group stage for the second season in a row. Unlike last season, we’ve got a decent draw in the League Phase and I think we’re good enough to finish in the top 24 and qualify for the knockout stages.

Elsewhere in Europe, after pinning my hopes on Lincoln Red Imps they didn’t even make it to the group stage of the Conference League - so it looks like we’ll be improving the Gibraltar coefficient by ourselves once again!

We should also be winning all 20 of our league matches like we did last season as we have by far the strongest XI in the Gibraltar league.

The gap between us and the other clubs is so wide that we could well be seeing more 10-0 victories in the Gibraltar league this season.​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

Another year and another experience for us in the Champions League ‘League Phase’ after getting to the last 16 last season.

Our first group stage game was a 3-2 victory over Malmo, with striker Sava Veselinovic - who scored 6 of the 10 goals against Sheriff - making Dennis Drakes-Thomas seem like a distant memory.

Next up was a special win at the Amsterdam Arena in our 2nd match, that result really made it feel like we’re where we belong in the Champions League.

Our third game was one of our toughest against Chelsea, where we had Dontae Labatt playing for us at centre-back against his loan club, who he has yet to even make his debut for!

The result there was expected, but even a 2-0 loss wasn’t that bad considering we played with 10 men for 30 mins.

Matchday number 4 was also a very respectable 2-2 draw away against AC Milan.

So after 4 games, we are 15th in the table and very much on course to make the knockouts for the second season in a row.

The success in the Champions League has been amazing, especially when it doesn’t feel like our squad is that good. Lewis Gibson is our starting centre-back but was playing in League One last season, with Myles Peart-Harris one of our star players despite being backup at Championship Huddersfield last season.

Signing unwanted players from English clubs seems to be the way to go for us and we also picked up Will Alves on a free after he was recently released by Leicester.

He wasn’t registered in time for the Champions League, but is fine to play in our domestic games…

…the first of which was a 17-0 against Lynx. Seventeen.

Harry Leonard scored 9 goals in that match, we are miles better than them but I have never known anything like it on any FM.

Needless to say, we broke every record imaginable with that win.

Yet the best thing of all is that we followed that up with a disappointing 1-1 draw against Red Imps - the first time we’d dropped points in 26 matches! Typical!

We seem to have a knack of scoring for fun in certain games, so I’m hoping we can take that form into the final 4 Champions League matches.​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

With things going incredibly well at Magpies I thought it would be good to go into more detail about the Gibraltar national team.

It’s been very slow progress as manager of Gibraltar in the last few years and it’s not helped when two players are sent off against Germany in a World Cup qualifier (one of which was former Magpies player Kirby, now at Lincoln Red Imps).

Another player was sent off away against Iceland, but somehow we managed to win 2-1 with Tom Fellows - a recently turned Gibraltar national and still at Magpies - scoring the winner.

Players like Fellows are exactly what we need for the national side. Sign them from English clubs, keep them at Magpies for two years and then ask them to represent Gibraltar.

15 players in the most recent squad of 23 were signed from English clubs and have followed that exact path, including Quansah, Fellows, Andiyapan and Wassell who are all at Magpies still along with former Magpies players such as Stirk, Kirby, Adshead and Bailey.

There are also players in the Magpies squad that are a year or so away from gaining Gibraltar nationality (Leonard, Ramsey, Peart-Harris, Bayliss, Gibson, Alves) and would massively improve the national team, so I’m hoping they stay at Magpies and choose to represent Gibraltar when the opportunity arises

Two seasons ago I also signed Miguel Azeez with that in mind. He has been backup at Magpies since then and played just 3 games for the club. I purely need him for the national team.

So I was not prepared for him to turn us down once he gained Gibraltar nationality - you’re never going to get into the England squad mate!

It’s a shame because he will genuinely improve the Gibraltar midfield and we actually had a really good World Cup qualifying campaign overall, finishing in 5th place but gaining 13 points in total.

It puts us at a record high 159th in the world rankings, but that didn’t stop the Gibraltar FA from warning that they want results to improve…

It does feel like things are finally moving in the right direction though and depending on how things go, the 2034 World Cup in 5 years' time could be an achievable aim.​

 

[Hampus Silverholt]

Our third venture into the League Phase of the Champions League was going well after 4 games and we eased to a 3-0 victory over Randers in the fifth match, although it’s still annoying me that we’re a Champions League club with only 2 away fans!

Next up for us was a tougher test against Roma but we again passed with flying colours by beating them 3-1. That put us on 13 points, meaning that even if we lost our last 2 matches I was confident we’d qualify for the knockout phase.

We then had a bit of a wait for our final two games and the January transfer window was underway in the meantime.

Normally it’s a quiet period for us but for some reason, second-division Spanish side Osasuna was the place that our best players wanted to be…

Would you prefer Champions League knockout stage football, or midtable in the second tier in Spain? I think our club reputation is really starting to hamper things!

We actually managed to block those transfers although have promised players that we’ll sell them in the summer if a bigger bid comes in.

We also managed to keep Macedonian midfielder Cvetanovski at the club, after he agreed a move to Nottingham Forest but couldn’t get a work permit.

We also signed Brazilian Otino in the summer for £1.5m and loaned him back to his Brazilian club, but he’s now returned and will become part of our squad for the second half of the season.

So after dealing with those unexpected transfer requests, it was nice to be back to Champions League football again - although we did get thumped by Arsenal 3-0 in our seventh League Phase match. I don’t think we’ve ever managed a draw against English teams in any European competition so far.

We also completely bottled our last game against Real Sociedad. But it really didn’t matter as our previous results meant that we had done enough to qualify for the knockout round playoff round for the second successive season.

Last season we finished in 14th with 12 points, this season we finished in 12th with 13 points. Slight progress, but not bad for a team who can’t take more than 20 fans to away games!

Last season we faced Borussia Dortmund at this stage and this campaign we have been paired with Lazio in the last 32.

They finished lower than us in the League Phase but are 3rd in Serie A, so really should be beating us.

Stranger things have happened though, especially when it comes to Magpies and the Champions League!​